France = Friends!

When we got to Lyon, we met Gaelle, our best London friend. Gaelle, was the girl who spoke barely any English in our Camden hostel room that first night in London. We became fast friends and her English got really good. She left London, a little bit before us, because she got a job at a PR company in Lyon, France. We were so happy to see her again after 3 months! She met us in the main square after work and we walked with her to her cute flat where we would be staying in her roommates room who was out of town.

Gaelle's place
We went for a beer at a cute little bar near Gaelle's house and then we went for dinner at this place that had amazing cheese flat breads. Probably one of the most amazing meals ever. Thus far, France had proved to be as delicious as everyone had claimed it would. Gaelle bought our meal for us which was so sweet of her and then we went for ice cream and a climb to the top of a big hill to look over the whole city, lit up. Lyon was very cute and even had a mini eiffel tower. There was a lot of cool grafitti and cute little stores. We didn't take as many photos as we should have because we were so busy catching up with Gaelle. The next day, Gaelle left for work and Ellie and I went to a gigantic public park that had a zoo as well. It was pretty cool and free which is excellent.



That night, Gaelle and her friend Fanny came over after work and we ate a quiche that Gaelle had made which was phenomenal. We drank some beer and headed to see CocoRosie in concert. Ellie and I had previously saw cocorosie at Roskilde but loved the performance so much so we told Gaelle we would see them again.

It was an amazing experience because the venue was an old amphitheatre that was ancient and just like ruins. It was stunning to be honest. It was on the highest point of the city and overlooked the whole glittering skyline. Cocorosie gave a great show again and afterwards, we attempted to go back to Gaelle's but we had locked ourselves out so we slept at Fanny's until we could figure it out. We just hung around Fanny's the next day until they got off work and we got ourselves unlocked. We decided to treat ourselves to a really fancy restaurant and it was so worth it.

Gaelle had chicken lollipops with three different chocolate style sauces.

Ellie's salmon cone

My gazpachos and bruschetta


I had three different gazpachos, almond crusted fish in white chocolate sauce and prawns in a strawberry champagne sauce. I also had a cheese plate for dessert!
It was a delicious and very innovative display of food.


After dinner walking it off!


The next day we just hung around a coffee shop, catching up on the internet and went to a house party with Gaelle and her boyfriend after work. It was really fun because after the party we just rented those free city bikes and rode the bikes home to Gaelle's since the transportation had stopped. It was awesome to just zip through the tiny French streets by bike.

We were sad to say good-bye to Gaelle but she was leaving for a work trip to Morocco so we had to go. We both really miss her and hope she will come visit us sometime in the states.

The next day, we left for Marseille. We were meeting up with Moon and staying at her couchsurfing hosts home who was leaving out of town. When we arrived, Moon told us the sad news that she had been robbed and her passport was stolen by some thugs so we wanted to cheer her up. We dropped our stuff at Sasha's amazingly good-looking warehouse conversion flat.

We then walked to the beach and found a little local spot where only a handful of French people were swimming and we jumped in and watched the sunset with a bottle of wine. It was a really gorgeous evening. Since Sasha was leaving, we decided to cook a big feast at his house and have a girls night in.

We walked all the way back from the beach, taking in Marseille's beauty at night. We then had a huge feast before falling asleep. We had to be on a train to Barcelona though at 7 so I awoke and watched the sunrise from Sasha's balcony and the quiet was really nice.

Marseille felt a lot more Middle Eastern than any place we had been and it was nice to have some diversity and a change from picture perfect Western Europe.